As soon as 1866, John Carter of Virginia, Civil War veteran, was transported to Mars through astral projection. Once on the planet, Carter found that he had demigod-like strength due to the lesser gravity of Mars. He was soon captured by the Tharks, the planet's warlike, four-armed, green inhabitants, but eventually managed to escape from them and rescued the princess Dejah Thoris, one of the humanoid red martian race. Carter eventually rised to become "Jeddak (king) of Jeddaks, Warlord of Barsoom" and marrying Dejah Thoris.

It was not until more then three decades later that American naval officer Lieutenant Gullivar Jones was transported to the planet by flying carpet. Upon arriving, he meeted with the friendly Hither people, with whom he had a number of adventures.

Among the other native species of Mars were the Hrossa, the Pfiltriggi, and the Sorns, with whom Dr. Elwin Ransom met when he was kidnapped to the planet. The Sorns were described by him as “spindly and flimsy things, twice or three times the height of a man... so crazily thin and elongated in the leg, so top-heavily pouted in the chest, such stalky, flexible-looking distortions of earthly bipeds”.

In Earth's late-19th century, Mars was invaded by an alien species, probably from another galaxy, not native to the planet. These "molluscs" transported themselves through way of tripod-machines. They invaded the planet, but after years of constant fight were repelled by the combined Martian resistance, under lead of Warlord John Carter. The molluscs then, in 1898, fled Mars, and sought to invade Earth.¹

¹ from Under the Moons of Mars and its sequels, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, from Gullivar Jones of Mars, by Edwin L. Arnold, from Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis, and from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The images on this page are from this location.